


C'est la Mort

by madasthesea



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Blood, Brief suicidal thoughts, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 05:37:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2496413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madasthesea/pseuds/madasthesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't know how to live without you."</p><p>"Oh, Fitz. You're a genius. You'll figure it out."</p>
            </blockquote>





	C'est la Mort

There’s a gunshot, a scream, and then Simmons is falling against him and he wraps his arms around her and sinks to the ground before piecing together the facts. Blood is already soaking her shirt and she’s gasping for breath and there’s a hole in her shirt, just below her collarbone, and he feels like there’s a hole in his lungs, too. He can’t breathe.

“No,” he mutters, as the chaos around them seems to come to a standstill. “No, no, no, no.”

“Fitz,” she gasps. Trip’s hands are pressing against the wound, and Skye is on her knees next to them, but Fitz just stares down at Jemma’s face. Time seems to be stopped, and his whole body is numb from shock and fear, and he’s never felt so surreally detached in his life. And then she sobs from the pain and he feels like he’s being pulled back to reality with a metal hook lodged in his gut.

“It’s ok, Simmons,” Skye is saying.

Jemma fumbles for his hand and when she finds it, she holds on like it’s a lifeline. “I’m sorry,” she says, over and over. He’s shaking his head at her, because he knows why she’s apologizing, but he refuses to believe it.

“You’re going to be fine, Jemma.”

“I don’t think I am, Fitz,” she whispers, and he should believe her because her entire front is soaked in blood, and each breath rattles, and there’s blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.

“You have to be,” he insists anyway. Skye lets out a choked off sob next to him, and Trip’s hands have stopped pressing against the wound, and he wants to yell at him to fix her, but that’s always been his job when it comes down to it and he doesn’t know how. Tears are splashing onto her face, and he knows they’re his but he doesn’t care. 

“I don’t know how to live without you,” he confesses. She brushes a sticky hand across his cheek.

“Oh, Fitz. You’re a genius. You’ll figure it out.”

“I don’t want to,” is his knee-jerk response. He’d lived without her before—those years before the Academy, when he had no idea that Jemma Simmons existed, but somehow ached for her anyway. When he had met her, some part of him, without his permission, had decided he was never going to live another day without Jemma by his side. “ _I don’t want to._ ”

“You have to,” she coughs, and he rubs his thumb along her lips to rid them of the blood that appears. “For me, ok? Don’t—“ she breaks off, struggling to drag in a breath. A solitary tear drips into her hairline.

“Simmons,” Skye sobs from behind Fitz and he feels guilty, just for a second, because these are their last seconds with her too, and he is taking them, but he can’t make himself move, can’t possibly step aside and take his hands from the warmth of hers.

“Fitz,” Jemma gasps out, and he can see her eyes sliding away from him and he is suddenly choking on the terror of this second, his mouth is filled with the bitter taste of it, and he _can’t breathe._

“Jemma,” he forces around the blockage. “Jemma. Don’t. Please.”

He’s trembling so hard he almost can’t see straight, and the only clear thought he can muster is her name and a plea, over and over, and he honestly thinks he might throw up.

“Jemma. _Please_.”

But she’s falling away from him, and he might have thought how she’s been falling away from him from the second they stepped on that bloody plane, but for the first time in his life, his mind is totally blank, totally still and unresponsive. He’s shaking still, trembling so hard he’s shaking Jemma’s body as he clings to it, and he’s never understood why people shake the dead in vain attempts to wake them until this very second, because he needs her to respond and if this is the only way get her to, so be it.

“Jemma!” He yells, and it’s stupid, because he _knows_ she can’t hear him, just like he knows that she’s always heard him before. But he yells her name again. And again. And he’s shaking her even harder, and it’s making him ill to see her limp in his arms, but he can’t stop shaking her.

“Agent Fitz!” someone calls to him, but he doesn’t recognize that they’re addressing him until there are two pairs of hands wrapping around his biceps.

“ _No!”_ he screams when Trip appears in front of him and begins to lift Simmons from his arms. “No, don’t touch her!” He tries to reach out and take her back, to pull her back against his chest and curl around her and never move, just stay with her until they’re both dust, but the hands are still firm around his arms, and they’re pulling him away.

They put him on his feet, but he has no strength left in him, and the only thing keeping him upright is the arms wrapped around his torso. He sees Skye, sobbing, and she’s not looking at him, as if he were a tragedy and she had no right to see it. He can feel someone’s chest hitching behind him, and tears are dripping from Trip’s jaw, and he’s suddenly furious at their grief, and he knows it’s not fair, because they loved her too. But he doesn’t care, because he loved her with every cell in his body and every breath and every heartbeat, and in a few weeks they’ll be able to breathe normally again and he never will.

He rips his arms from May and Coulson and staggers away from them, away from their comparably insignificant grief and away from the blood covering the floor. He makes it four steps before he collapses against a wall and empties his stomach. He heaves until he’s just coughing up bile and his throat is stinging from the acid. Someone is pulling on his arm again and the touch feels like pin pricks, but he lets them pull him to wherever they want to go.

They go through a door and suddenly they’re in the silver light of the full moon and there are trees surrounding them, and he thinks the fresh air is supposed to clear his head, fill his lungs and allow him to breath, but he feels just a raw as before.

He doesn’t know how long Coulson and May drag him between them, but when they put him down at the base of a tree, the compound is no longer in sight and the eastern horizon is turning a slightly paler shade of gray. His head lolls against the bark of a tree for a second before his eyes settle on Trip gently setting Jemma’s body on the pine needle covered ground.

He’s not sure his breathing had ever evened out, but he’s aware of it picking up speed and it doesn’t matter how much he gasps, no oxygen seems to be getting in his lungs and his whole body is on fire. Skye is kneeling next to him, and she reaches out to touch him, but he jerks away from her. The air is catching in his throat and he feels like he’s choking, drowning. Tears are dripping into his mouth and sobs are being ripped from his throat and it doesn’t even occur to him to try to calm down.

He throws his head back against the rough bark of the tree, feels it biting into his scalp and tries to center himself on the pain, but it is so insignificant that he almost loses it in the suffocating agony that every consecutive second brings. The sobs are getting worse, tearing at his raw throat and he doesn’t feel better for them. He sucks in a deep breath, his heart feeling like it’s going to claw itself out of his chest, and he physically cannot contain the pain anymore. He yells, his whole body shaking, curling into himself, his fingers digging into the dirt until the pine needles pierce the skin of his palms and he’s out of air.

People are saying his name, repeatedly, and he wants them to stop, because his name expects another after if, and it isn’t there, and it is so wrong and he takes in another breath and screams it out to cover up the sound of their voices saying his name and not hers. He doesn’t know if yelling his grief to the stars is making him feel better, but he does it until his throat is too raw to make sound, until all the energy has been wrung from his body.

His final scream echoes off the trees and the silence after it fades seems almost cruel in its starkness. Skye is still next to him, her knee barely a centimeter from his. He can hear her crying into her hand next to him. Coulson is sitting in front of him, tears staining his cheeks. He doesn’t look over to where Trip is standing guard over Jemma.

He doesn’t see May until she’s sticking a needle in his arm. He feels the drug coursing through his veins in seconds, pulling him down into oblivion, and he wants to throw his arms open to welcome it. He’ll hate himself for it later, because Jemma begged him and he promised to live for her, but as he willingly falls into the void, he finds himself hoping he never wakes up.   


End file.
